Valentina Vitali
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719099656
- eISBN:
- 9781526109774
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719099656.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
While post-war popular cinema has traditionally been excluded from accounts of national cinemas, the last fifteen years have seen the academy’s gradual rediscovery of cult and, more, generally, ...
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While post-war popular cinema has traditionally been excluded from accounts of national cinemas, the last fifteen years have seen the academy’s gradual rediscovery of cult and, more, generally, popular films. Why, many years after their release, do we now deem these films worthy of study? The book situates ‘low’ film genres in their economic and culturally specific contexts (a period of unstable ‘economic miracles’ in different countries and regions) and explores the interconnections between those contexts, the immediate industrial-financial interests sustaining the films, and the films’ aesthetics. It argues that the visibility (or not) of popular genres in a nation’s account of its cinema is an indirect but demonstrable effect of the centrality (or not) of a particular kind of capital in that country’s economy. Through in-depth examination of what may at first appear as different cycles in film production and history – the Italian giallo, the Mexican horror film and Hindi horror cinema – Capital and popular cinema lays the foundations of a comparative approach to film; one capable of accounting for the whole of a national film industry’s production (‘popular’ and ‘canonic’) and applicable to the study of film genres globally.Less
While post-war popular cinema has traditionally been excluded from accounts of national cinemas, the last fifteen years have seen the academy’s gradual rediscovery of cult and, more, generally, popular films. Why, many years after their release, do we now deem these films worthy of study? The book situates ‘low’ film genres in their economic and culturally specific contexts (a period of unstable ‘economic miracles’ in different countries and regions) and explores the interconnections between those contexts, the immediate industrial-financial interests sustaining the films, and the films’ aesthetics. It argues that the visibility (or not) of popular genres in a nation’s account of its cinema is an indirect but demonstrable effect of the centrality (or not) of a particular kind of capital in that country’s economy. Through in-depth examination of what may at first appear as different cycles in film production and history – the Italian giallo, the Mexican horror film and Hindi horror cinema – Capital and popular cinema lays the foundations of a comparative approach to film; one capable of accounting for the whole of a national film industry’s production (‘popular’ and ‘canonic’) and applicable to the study of film genres globally.
Valentina Vitali
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719099656
- eISBN:
- 9781526109774
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719099656.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The first part of this chapter looks at how the global changes described in the previous chapter manifested themselves in Italy and offers evidence that there the kind of capital typically associated ...
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The first part of this chapter looks at how the global changes described in the previous chapter manifested themselves in Italy and offers evidence that there the kind of capital typically associated with popular genre films, short-term speculative capital, was a minor and strictly contained player within the country’s economy. Mario Bava’s cult thriller La ragazza che sapeva troppo was produced under these conditions. The second part of the chapter examines Bava’s film in its broader context, where small productions seeking to make a quick profit by monetising well tested sales points such as nudity and suspense where, at best, tolerated always critically ignored, in spite of their experimental and innovative character.Less
The first part of this chapter looks at how the global changes described in the previous chapter manifested themselves in Italy and offers evidence that there the kind of capital typically associated with popular genre films, short-term speculative capital, was a minor and strictly contained player within the country’s economy. Mario Bava’s cult thriller La ragazza che sapeva troppo was produced under these conditions. The second part of the chapter examines Bava’s film in its broader context, where small productions seeking to make a quick profit by monetising well tested sales points such as nudity and suspense where, at best, tolerated always critically ignored, in spite of their experimental and innovative character.
Hilary Chung and Bernadette Luciano
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780748694136
- eISBN:
- 9781474412193
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748694136.003.0014
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
In recent decades, many Italian filmmakers have turned to the documentary medium in response to the lack of commitment by public and private broadcasters to the production of programmes of cultural ...
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In recent decades, many Italian filmmakers have turned to the documentary medium in response to the lack of commitment by public and private broadcasters to the production of programmes of cultural significance. Unfortunately, the contestable funding available for their production is limited, as is documentary distribution beyond the festival circuit. The emergence and evolution of the web documentary has provided an opportunity for new channels of distribution and increasingly foregrounds the role of the user/viewer in their engagement, interaction, and negotiation with the reality documented. This chapter explores the issues of autonomous navigation, multiplicity, and self-reflexive aesthetics in Sergio Basso's documentary film Giallo a Milano and the associated web documentary Made in Chinatown, in order to understand the new modes of audience engagement provided by this combination of formats. It suggests that embracing the web documentary format triggers the immediate reaction of viewers to sociopolitical issues and creates a new kind of activist reflection, at once discontinuous, fragmentary, and thus open to debate.Less
In recent decades, many Italian filmmakers have turned to the documentary medium in response to the lack of commitment by public and private broadcasters to the production of programmes of cultural significance. Unfortunately, the contestable funding available for their production is limited, as is documentary distribution beyond the festival circuit. The emergence and evolution of the web documentary has provided an opportunity for new channels of distribution and increasingly foregrounds the role of the user/viewer in their engagement, interaction, and negotiation with the reality documented. This chapter explores the issues of autonomous navigation, multiplicity, and self-reflexive aesthetics in Sergio Basso's documentary film Giallo a Milano and the associated web documentary Made in Chinatown, in order to understand the new modes of audience engagement provided by this combination of formats. It suggests that embracing the web documentary format triggers the immediate reaction of viewers to sociopolitical issues and creates a new kind of activist reflection, at once discontinuous, fragmentary, and thus open to debate.
L. Andrew Cooper
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037092
- eISBN:
- 9780252094385
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037092.003.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book explores the extreme violence that pervades Dario Argento's films, and particularly the ways in which they push the limits of visual and auditory experience by offending, confusing, ...
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This book explores the extreme violence that pervades Dario Argento's films, and particularly the ways in which they push the limits of visual and auditory experience by offending, confusing, sickening, and baffling the viewers. It looks at Argento's approach to his work over more than four decades of filmmaking, and his commitment to innovation that is evident in two closely related genres whose disturbing violence reaches previously unrecorded levels of pain, suffering, and mental anguish: crime thriller and supernatural horror. From his directorial debut, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), to Giallo (2009), Argento's films challenge a viewer's accepted ideas about film spectatorship, meaning, storytelling, and genre. This book also looks at the centrality of collaboration, particularly with family, in Argento's work by analyzing sixteen films that feature him as writer and director. Finally, it discusses how Argento's films function as rhetorical interventions against dominant views on film criticism, interpretation, narrative, and conventions through an examination of interpretive possibilities that connect the films to broader tendencies in film history.Less
This book explores the extreme violence that pervades Dario Argento's films, and particularly the ways in which they push the limits of visual and auditory experience by offending, confusing, sickening, and baffling the viewers. It looks at Argento's approach to his work over more than four decades of filmmaking, and his commitment to innovation that is evident in two closely related genres whose disturbing violence reaches previously unrecorded levels of pain, suffering, and mental anguish: crime thriller and supernatural horror. From his directorial debut, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), to Giallo (2009), Argento's films challenge a viewer's accepted ideas about film spectatorship, meaning, storytelling, and genre. This book also looks at the centrality of collaboration, particularly with family, in Argento's work by analyzing sixteen films that feature him as writer and director. Finally, it discusses how Argento's films function as rhetorical interventions against dominant views on film criticism, interpretation, narrative, and conventions through an examination of interpretive possibilities that connect the films to broader tendencies in film history.
